New shared architecture opens up top-tier, enterprise-grade UC tools from Cisco to organisations with as few as 30 seats

Node4 announces a new and improved Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platform. The new offering is being built on a shared architecture which means that Node4 customers and channel partners will benefit from both a customer dedicated platform and a multi-tenant one, allowing much smaller organisations to affordably access top-tier collaboration tools.

Mark Phelps, Collaboration Product Manager, said: “It’s a really exciting time for Node4 and its customers. We have seen fantastic take up of our newly launched Collaboration platform, with thousands of users already benefitting from our Collaboration Experiences. The development of a shared architecture solution will allow partners and customers of every size to benefit from our Cisco Powered enterprise class collaboration experience. This is only the first in a number of major product portfolio enhancements Node4 is going to announce across the coming months, intended to help businesses supercharge their collaborative abilities.”

This new shared architecture will allow Node4 to service smaller customers, and makes Node4 one of the few Cisco HCS providers that can deliver to SMEs.

Node4 can now bring the Cisco Enterprise Class experience, delivered in the cloud, to customers with as few as 30 seats. Normally, customers of this size would be forced to compromise on the technology choice, or would be forced to purchase on-premise or managed services, rather than a fully hosted, CMSP certified, Cisco Powered service.

Richard Buxton, Head of Collaboration at Node4 commented: “UC and collaboration are key pillars for Node4. We’re focused on providing our customers with state-of-the-art technology to help them keep up with the rapidly evolving workplace of the future. We want to help small and medium businesses to be part of the future of work revolution, and our improved solutions will do just that.”

Channel partners will see the benefits of this new shared architecture too. They will be able to build a shared architecture instance which can be dedicated to a single partner. This shared architecture instance can be used to service a number of the partner’s end customers through a single set of applications, providing simplicity, scalability and more direct customer control to every channel partner.

Andrew Wilson, Channel Sales Director at Node4 added: “As with all our partner solutions, this release is underpinned by our well-received ‘Recruit, Enable, Grow’ channel methodology. This gives our partners the best of both worlds; our top right Gartner Magic Quadrant technology and the right support and people to help partners position the solution with their customers.”

As Node4 has noted previously, in research and whitepapers, smaller and mid-sized businesses represent a critical part of the world’s business economy, yet are fundamentally under-served by existing tools. They often struggle to find affordable, high-quality solutions that enable collaboration. Node4’s new and improved UCaaS will help small and mid-size businesses have access to enterprise grade collaboration software of the quality and capability they deserve.

This project is part of Node4’s continuous development plan for its collaborartion offering, which currently includes business messaging and meeting applications, reporting and call analytics, compliance solutions, and network based call routing amongst other exciting roadmap developments to be announced in the coming months.